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Notes from Flight 163, the oilsands shuttle from Toronto to Edmonton

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Shared with permission from author Stewart Muir

Stewart Muir is a Victoria-based writer who serves as executive director of the Resource Works Society.

On a recent Monday morning, I found myself on Air Canada Flight 163 from Toronto Pearson to Edmonton. As the plane loaded, I began to sense there was something not so regular about the passengers boarding the Airbus 320 for a regularly scheduled flight.

Unlike those I more typically see on my flights, nobody was in flip-flops or golf wear, or fussing with oversized or unnecessary luggage. This was a mix mostly without the easy-to-spot snowbirds, students, and first-time fliers.

The travellers this day were mostly middle-aged men, fit-looking and dressed Mark’s Work Wearhouse casual. There were some women too, and like the men they moved with familiar ease through the cabin lugging full but neatly packed backpacks or duffels. Many carried a preferred travel distraction in hand, ready for a few hours of Netflix or sudoku. I could hear the distinctive accents of the Maritimes and Quebec, and the more familiar central Canadian English, as they found their places the way transit riders enter a subway car.

It was rapidly apparent that I was witnessing a commuter routine, one not meaningfully different than the suit-filled shuttles carrying day-tripping lawyers, accountants, pharma reps, engineers and lobbyists from the same airport that morning to destinations like Ottawa, Montreal, Boston and New York.

In concentrated form, I was witnessing a typical, daily migration of the Canadian oil sands workforce, probably with some LNG and mining thrown in. They were heading to the workplace. Not for a day, but for stretches of a week or two.

Multiply this by dozens or scores, in airports across the country, usually less starkly evident than on this particular flight, and it was just a regular day in Canadian air travel as the massive energy employee base changed shift.

A few hours later, after we unloaded at the other end, I headed for the exit and my Uber. Not so most of my fellow passengers. They continued on their way to connecting flights – to destinations such as Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, and air services flying direct to some of the big oil sands projects – in time for shift change at the work camps where they were expected.

Statistics could not convey more forcefully than this how the oil & gas economy has a singular and powerful effect on the economy. The large paycheques drawing these men and women to their jobs in the West flowed directly back to their family bank accounts in the GTA and beyond, paying mortgages, grocery bills, taxes and hockey fees.

Flight 163, multiplied many times over, represents what the energy sector, at its most direct and tangible, does for the Canadian economy.

This is what I’m thinking about while surveying a nation that is now deep into an unprecedented social and economic crisis.

Over the coming days and weeks, things that we do will affect how deep and damaging this crisis becomes.

We are seeing Green New Deal advocates pursue the thesis that the coming economic catastrophe is the perfect moment to “transition off fossil fuels”. There are plenty of signs of this thought process – “Hey guess what guys, in one stroke we could meet the Paris Agreement by dropping emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels – not by 2030, but by 2021!”

To put this in perspective, consider that the Conference Board of Canada recently estimated that in one of the milder transition scenarios, meeting such targets will cost Canadians $2.2 trillion and require 14 per less use of residential energy, 47 per cent less car travel, eight times the subway use, and 54 per cent less domestic air travel.

Who’s ready to make this change overnight? We couldn’t do it if we wanted to. Think for just a moment about the costs and tradeoffs required, and the difficulty of accomplishing it in the midst of a global health crisis. Clearly it makes no sense at all. Yet Canada might be the only oil-exporting country where accelerating the transition is likely to receive serious acknowledgment in senior decision-making circles.

Even without such measures, Canada is already moving in the right direction: we are a global leader in clean energy, with 80 per cent of the population living in provinces where more than 90 per cent of electricity is drawn from non-fossil fuel sources. This alone makes us the envy of the world. The prevalence of clean electricity means that wherever it is used in industry, the resulting resource commodity exports can outcompete most other similar products in climate terms, with the bonus that they can allow importing countries to reduce their own emissions.

Mere inattention could do as much damage at this time as a wrong decision. Standing back and watching the domestic oil and gas industry topple will have an effect on citizen wellbeing far in excess of what the collapse of any other industry would bring.

We would be looking at the long-term impairment of Canadian living standards – that is to say a reduction in the value of our jobs, in our quality of life, in our educational opportunities, and in our ability to help other countries while continuing as a net positive influence on the world.

The fossil fuel industry – “it is how we earn our living”

It’s hard to describe how important the energy industry is to Canada. Let me try.

Andy Calitz, the former CEO of LNG Canada who performed the herculean task of achieving a positive final investment decision (FID) for the project before moving on to his next challenge, provided a memorable image when he spoke at a small dinner of diplomats and academics I attended not long after the FID.

When the first shipload of liquefied natural gas departs from Kitimat in a few years’ time, he said, that cargo would be worth $100 million – a staggering sum. (I’ve run this figure past a couple of experienced heads in the energy field, and nobody has scoffed at it.)

In Vancouver, we go giddy each spring at the thought of cruise ship season, which last year saw 290 sailings out of the port. If, as is commonly said, one of those sailings means $1 million injected into the local economy, how does that compare with LNG?

Back of envelope math says that a single year of LNG Canada operations, with its promised traffic of one ship in and one ship out every day, will have the impact of one century of the Vancouver cruise industry. I’m not knocking the cruise industry, it’s important and we need it. But let that comparison sink in.

Here’s another one.

Back in 2017, I calculated that natural gas investments in British Columbia that year were on a scale that equated to building the behemoth Wynn hotel in Las Vegas (4,750 rooms over 215 acres) in the Vancouver area, along with a special SkyTrain extension to serve it. ( Natural gas is back: British Columbia drilling surge is behind $5+ billion in 2017 investment )

Never mind that no investor has ever come forward with such a bold plan for a new resort anywhere in Canada. And it’s actually pretty fortunate that we got the energy infrastructure rather than the casino, given the prospects for tourism in 2020.

Economist Patricia Mohr recently pointed out that Canada is “a trading nation and an ‘energy specialist’ — it is how we earn our living.” Crude oil, all by itself, generated net exports of $62 billion in 2019, up from $57.5 billion in 2018 — far above any other export category.

As Ms. Mohr stated, oil exports come in handy given that we habitually run large deficits in other areas including motor vehicles and parts, machinery, electronic equipment, and consumer goods.

During the COVID-19 crisis, it’s obvious we cannot go without lifesaving medical necessities. Unlike our abundant oil, producing them isn’t a great strength. Canada must import billions’ worth of these goods every year. If you isolate just three medical categories – vaccines, medical apparatus and breathing aids – the numbers show clearly that our own ability to manufacture these items is very limited, even as consumption grows year after year.


The current global crisis has already brought a plummeting Canadian dollar, which in turn makes the imported goods that we rely on more costly. Exports that we can sell for U.S. dollars will offset this, but only if we have products to sell and markets ready to buy them. We need to preserve the ability to produce more as more income is needed, while at the same time figuring in the unfortunate reality that many of the things we export are themselves falling in price, so that higher production volumes are required just to stay in place.

The resource economy actually turns out – despite its detractors – to be both flexible and durable as a source of national well-being. Markets for some of the commodities we produce can be expanded at will, something that cannot be said of iPhones, beach umbrellas or BMWs.

Right now in Russia, the government is starting to realize it might not have been such a good idea to enter into an oil price war with Saudi Arabia. More and more evidence suggests that for a winner to emerge will require not months but years of effort, and at the end of it the United States oil industry, resented deeply by both Russia and Saudi Arabia, could well come on top anyways.

The most chilling observation, as reported today by the Wall Street Journal, comes from Igor Sechin, head of Russia’s largest oil producer, state-controlled giant Rosneft: “If you give up your mar­ket share, you will never get it back.”

There’s a lesson in this for Canada. Those who see an “opportunity” to deliberately give up our oil market share, to encourage a fast pivot into an unknown energy future, are playing recklessly with how we as a country earn our living. If we ratchet down production by letting industry fail, and decide later that it was a mistake to do so, we will not easily be able to retrieve our market share. That’s a frightening thought. Worse still, killing off the industry will make Canadians more dependent on imported oil, which will have to be paid for using a weakened loonie.

Doing what’s necessary

In 2018, the federal government announced an export diversification strategy that would increase Canada’s overseas exports by 50 per cent by 2025. Even before the combined oil/pandemic crisis, it seemed an unlikely ambition.

“Investing in infrastructure to support trade” was one of the ways Ottawa deemed it could aid this ambitious goal, and credit is due for supporting projects such as the so-far-incomplete Trans Mountain and Coastal GasLink pipelines.

Other forces are holding us back. The Canada Infrastructure Bank, for example, is forbidden from investing its $35 billion of capital in fossil fuel projects, even if those investments could lead to lower energy use and emissions in the oil & gas upstream.

Meanwhile, our national infrastructure minister seems physically incapable of uttering the phrase “energy infrastructure” let alone the p-word (pipelines). Even our minister of natural resources has been placed in the uncomfortable position of carrying out a mandate letter requiring him to making finding alternative employment for oil and gas workers and communities a central task.

Now is the time to save, not strangle, an oil and gas industry that is frantically signalling the need for intervention .

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Quebec lieutenant Pablo Rodriguez yesterday promised Bombardier : “Our government is taking the necessary steps to get you financial help as quickly as possible.” A stock analyst opined that the Canadian and Quebec governments were “likely to offer support if Bombardier gets close to the edge.” (See Globe and Mail story .)

If a single company controlled by a wealthy clan, making luxury jets for billionaires, is to be given this treatment, then there should be no hesitation all in backing the industry that convincingly represents the foundational strength of our entire nation.

Trudeau has always found it difficult to make strong gestures of support to the Canadian oil patch. This time, finding it within himself to say those words of support matters more than ever. There is a very serious risk that Canada’s long term prosperity in both an absolute and a relative sense will be impaired by what occurs in the coming hours, days and weeks. Ahead of us, economic success will only come through determination and political commitment to put people and jobs first.

Stewart Muir is a Victoria-based writer who serves as executive director of the Resource Works Society.

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Alberta

Media melts down as Danielle Smith moves to end ‘transitioning’ of children in Alberta

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

After Alberta’s Danielle Smith put forth legislation to protect kids from being gender ‘transitioned,’ the Canadian media went on a predictable melt down, citing ‘experts’ who blatantly lie to advance the LGBT agenda.

A year after announcing her intention to combat transgender ideology and protect children, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has tabled three pieces of UCP (United Conservative Party) government legislation: 

  • The Education Amendment Act 2024 will require parental consent for “socially transitioning” children under the age of 16 (changing a child’s name or “preferred pronouns”). The bill also gives parents an “opt-in” option for any sexual or content at school. Smith has emphasized that the Alberta Teaching Profession Commission has the power to discipline teachers if they decide to break the law. 
  • The Health Statues Amendment Act 2024 will ban the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, as well as prohibit sex change surgeries on minors. 
  • The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act will ban trans-identifying men from female sports teams.  

Together, these three bills represent the most definitive pushback against gender ideology in Canada by any premier. Smith’s decision to announce her intent to pursue such legislation and then wait has turned out to be politically savvy—it has given the UCP government a good look at the LGBT response, and during that time the U.K.’s Labour government has successfully fought to maintain a similar ban in the courts and publicly rebutted many of the scare tactics used by LGBT activists.

Smith and the UCP are thus walking into this debate with eyes wide open, and are clearly certain that the public is on their side (it is) and that the legislation can survive the court challenges surely coming from LGBT activists. The policies are clearly popular with the UCP party’s base, who handed Smith a staggering 91.5% approval rating in her leadership review at UCP gathering in Red Deer last Saturday.  

The party also passed 35 policy resolutions, including several that indicate the UCP’s willingness to go further in fighting transgender ideology, with resolutions that would restrict “exclusively female spaces” like bathrooms and changerooms to females and designating transgender surgeries as “elective cosmetic procedures” not funded by the taxpayer. The motions received near-unanimous support.  

The Canadian press, unsurprisingly, is working hard to present policies that the vast majority of Canadians support as an attack on fundamental norms (albeit norms that only surfaced in the last few years and were never presented to voters). Global News ran the headline: “Alberta unveils 3 sweeping bills affecting trans and gender-diverse youth.” It is important to note that the press accepts the premises of transgender ideology as the starting point for their reporting, with heavy usage of nonsensical phrases like “gender-diverse youth,” which implies that there are many genders. 

In fact, Global News and other Canadian outlets trotted out talking points that have been definitively rebutted by the U.K.’s Cass Review and multiple medical studies—in fact, even the New York Times has been reporting on the permanent harms of puberty blockers over the past several years. An example from Global News: 

Alberta parents of gender-diverse youth like Haley Wray believe the new laws will give kids less choice — especially when it comes to health-care that is not permanent but instead, gives kids time to work through their identity struggles. 

‘Hormone blockers are a very valuable tool,’ Wray said, explaining they have a very small window of effectiveness to pause, but not prevent, puberty. ‘It is reversible because nothing changes. And what that does is it allows youth and families to have that that pause, that break to explore further, validate, understand what this means and know that permanent changes aren’t happening.’

Wray believes the proposed legislation will make the province a less safe place for tens of thousands of Alberta kids who aren’t straight. It’s why, Wray says, a growing number of families with transgender children are now grappling with whether Alberta is a place they can stay. ‘I know people who have, and I know people who genuinely feel like there is likely nowhere to go,’ she said. 

This is incorrect. Puberty blockers cause permanent damage, and children may be rendered permanently sterile after taking them for a relatively short period of time. Puberty is not something that can be “paused,” and it frequently causes irreversible rather than reversible damage. Smith and her government understand this, which is why they have decided to pass this legislation—not, as nearly every press outlet claimed, to “target trans youth,” but to protect them. 

The CBC chimed in with sentences like this one: 

Terms like ‘biological female’ and ‘biological male’ can be used to imply that transgender people are still their assigned sex at birth, despite their identity. 

To translate: a scientifically accurate and precise statement is now an ideological one, but inherently ideological language invented by the transgender movement over the past decade is, in fact, technically accurate. People can identify as anything they want; it is irrelevant to their biology. The CBC presents pointing this out as some sort of propagandistic attack on vulnerable people. 

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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Alberta

Alberta calling for federal election! Premier Smith demands feds scrap dangerous oil and gas production caps

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Premier Danielle Smith, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz and Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean issued the following statement on the proposed federal oil and gas production cap:

“This production cap will hurt families, hurt businesses and hurt Canada’s economy. We will defend our province, our country and our Constitutional rights.

“Make no mistake, this cap violates Canada’s constitution. Section 92A clearly gives provinces exclusive jurisdiction over non-renewable natural resource development yet this cap will require a one million barrel a day production cut by 2030.

“The evidence is overwhelming. Three reports from reputable firms have shown that these regulations will sucker-punch Canada’s economy, a million barrels cut every day according to S&P Global, $28 billion a year in lost GDP according to Deloitte, and up to 150,000 lost jobs according to the Conference Board of Canada.

“The losses to GDP mean billions a year will disappear from the economy. Billions that won’t be going towards new schools, hospitals and roads, all for a reckless ideological scheme that will not reduce global emissions.

“Ultimately, this cap will lead Alberta and our country into economic and societal decline. The average Canadian family would be left with up to $419 less for groceries, mortgage payments and utilities every month. Canadian parents and workers will suffer while Justin Trudeau outsources the duty to provide safe, affordable, reliable and responsibly produced oil and gas to dictators and less clean producers around the world. We could be the solution. Instead, Ottawa would rather sacrifice our ability to lead.

“Tweaks won’t work. This cap must be scrapped. Alberta’s government is actively exploring the use of every legal option, including a constitutional challenge and the use of the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act. We will not stand idly by while the federal government sacrifices our prosperity, our constitution and our quality of life for its extreme agenda.”

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